


Imperfect Water

by NorthwesternInsanity



Series: Hotel Disasters One-Shots [3]
Category: Blue Oyster Cult
Genre: Gen, Humor, crackfic, fire sprinkler, flood - Freeform, hotel disaster, playful fight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-03
Updated: 2018-05-03
Packaged: 2019-05-01 10:54:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14518950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorthwesternInsanity/pseuds/NorthwesternInsanity
Summary: Allen Lanier knows that Eric Bloom and Sandy Pearlman cursed them all on the home stretch of the drive. Then a mishap during a routine fire sprinkler test in the roadside hotel Blue Öyster Cult stops into for the night causes it to rain in Allen's room with the Bouchard Brothers. Cleaning up the aftermath gets a bit out of hand, but luckily, Allen finds himself bearing the least of the curse.





	Imperfect Water

Allen Lanier was thoroughly convinced that Eric Bloom and Sandy Pearlman had cursed their stay at a roadside hotel.

After four nights of traveling through a more sparse, rough area of the country in which they'd camped on the side of the road or at the far in between rest areas, or pulled all-nighters of driving in shifts and getting poor sleep that came with sleeping sitting up, slumped against a window, or dog-piled in a van, they were finally in a place where they would be accommodated overnight. 

It was far from a great looking hotel. It was styled more like a motel -garage shaped buildings with doors that opened right to the parking lot and a central office in the back of the lot between two buildings of the likeness, but with the room being large enough to have a couch and beat-up television set beside the two beds, it classified fairly as a hotel. Regardless, after four nights in a van and on the roadside, it might as well have been a four star suite.

Until Sandy and Eric opened their big mouths at the last rest area before rolling into town an hour later when they were well past stir-crazy and downright road sick, that was.

"See? It's been a rough few nights in a row, but I told you all you'd have a night without anywhere to be where we'd book some rooms to get some rest. You all should be feeling great by tomorrow night when you hit the stage," Sandy had said when Joe finished looking the map over and figured that they were on the home stretch without long to go.

"That's where it's at!" Eric cheered and pumped his fist with a tired smile as he climbed back in the van. "It'll be great even before then!"

Because they'd said everything would be fine and dandy, something would have to happen to throw a wrench in the works -it happened every time they dared get too optimistic -and Allen was _pissed_.

Perhaps he was subconsciously hoping that getting worked up and worrying about it would deter whatever bad luck they'd granted themselves. Sometimes if they worried too much about something, it didn't happen. That was unlikely to happen though -he found it far less reliable than the opposite Sandy had landed them in and that Eric just had to dig them in further. If anything, he was crankier than he usually would be less from trying to ward off bad luck, and more from lack of sleep after he'd been the one to take over for Eric at the end of yesterday to drive all night while everyone else slept. The only exception was Sandy, who had followed the van in his car. How Sandy could possibly be so chipper after being awake longer than twenty-four hours only added to Allen's annoyance.

Now he was in his room with the Bouchard brothers, sitting on the couch tucked along the wall of the room past the beds. He was reading his book, stretched out with his feet propped up on his portable keyboard, which was propped up against the side of the TV stand with Joe's bass. Tired as he was, Allen knew better than to try to fall asleep when he could hardly settle down. It would only land him with insomnia.

There was a screen between the couch and the beds, and Joe had pulled it halfway because Albert was asleep. He left it partway open though, having the TV on, trying to see it from where he sat on the end of the bed by Albert's feet while he worked on splicing wires inside a broken cord that went to a practice amp. 

Being able to stretch his legs out and lose the stiffness he'd had for days was just beginning to loosen up Allen's mood and drop his guard. As he grew sleepy, turning the pages slower and forcing himself to read on until he passed out, he figured by now there was nothing he could do if disaster was going to strike, and he'd know when it did. 

And, as superstition proposed, it was the exact moment that Allen came to terms with the potential for disaster to strike that it did.

A rumble echoed through the ceiling and wall, and with a squeal from the front side of the room facing the parking lot, a loud hiss sent a blasting spray from the metallic fire sprinkler head above the door, right above the beds.

Joe took a flying leap off the bed and out of the spray, shoving the wire into his pocket to keep it dry. 

The curtain kept most of the spray off Allen. The finer misting droplets sprayed over him like a light rain shower, but the way they hit his face turned him alert again. He flipped his book shut its a loud thump and squirreled it away inside his shirt and up under his arm in the same frantic manner as Joe had tucked away the wire.

"What?" he asked as he came around the curtain to see what was going on. "Tell me you're joking..." Even knowing something was going to happen, never in a million years would he have guessed this one. He was so stunned that he couldn't bring himself to freak out over it.

As the water began to pool on the light colored bedspreads and soak into them, Joe saw it was thick and muddy black with flame retardant. He _did_ freak out.

"GROSS!" He slammed his fist down on the bed, hard. Never would he understand why, but the hard spray hitting him and the beds sent a rage soaking into him with the water soaking through his clothes.

"Whoa, what...?" Albert whimpered, being woken up to a cold, wet sensation from water seeping through the blankets he'd buried himself under. He flipped back the covers, hopped off the bed, and as his expression changed with realization as to what was going on, Allen and Joe were left to the conclusion it must have been the funniest thing in the world for some reason they were unaware of, or days on the road had completely driven Albert looney tunes (they were both leaning toward the latter). Because he roared with hysterical laughter.

"Have you lost your marbles?" demanded Joe. "Gross!"

Allen just stared, not sure what to make of him. His eyes widened, he puckered his lips, and his eyebrows raised, exacerbating the sharp angles of his face.

"WHOO-HOOOOOO!" Albert howled through his laughter, running back and forth around the bed with his arms stretched out, hands hitting the spray. "IT'S _RAINING_ IN HERE!"

"I'd say it's at least a little too strong for just raining." Staying pressed against the wall and out of the worst of the spray, Allen held out his arm that wasn't securing his book into the flow, then watched muddy, black flame-retardant water dripping off where he'd been hit.

"That _is_ gross," he muttered, "but looks kind of cool too."

Joe snatched their suitcases -in the place where they were most susceptible to water damage at the feet of the beds -dragged them over by the door so they were right under the sprinkler and out of the blast, then pointed to Allen, shouting orders.

"YOU get the keyboard, and I'LL get the bass!"

Throwing the deadbolt with the door open so that they could move things in and out without the door locking, Joe pointed behind him, not pointing at anyone in particular, but his intention pretty clear.

"Albert, quit playing around and round up all the electronics. Get them outside to the van -quick! This isn't funny."

"Suitcases?" asked Albert through giggling, trying to wrangle a plastic grocery bag with cords in it over the practice amp to cover its plugs before running it past the spray zone.

"They're getting rained on now, but not soaked -we'll go back for them after we get this stashed in the van!"

In the hurry to get out to the van, which was luckily parked just outside the door, they realized they didn't have the keys, so Joe went and pounded on Eric and Buck's door for help while Allen sprinted down the length of the building to the central office for help.

"Get me the van key! We need help, right now!" Joe hollered. "Where's Sandy?"

"He went to the store with his car to restock some of our supplies and get gas-" Eric nearly got knocked over as Buck squeezed past him, simply answering Joe's order, getting Albert the van key, and helping him load in the instruments.

"What happened?" Eric looked at Joe and the dark, wet speckles on his t-shirt, Albert with a similar look as he stuffed items back in the van, and Allen running in and out of the central office down the parking lot.

"It's not raining in your room?!" Joe demanded.

Eric's eyebrows lowered over his glasses.

"No, what do you mean by-?" Neglecting to finish, seeing Buck approaching the adjacent door with Albert, Eric stepped out of the doorway, followed them in, and promptly yelled.

"Shit!"

Joe flung his hands out at his sides. "I told you!"

"How did it-?" Buck was frozen in place and had the most innocent expression fathomable, eyes wide and puppy-like, mouth gaping, hands up halfway to his cheeks.

"I don't know -no alarm, no nothing -just a rumble and it went!"

Albert dragged his suitcase through the spray, just as Joe pushed through past him to get his.

As soon as he got out of the way, Allen arrived back and came barreling through from outside for his bags.

"They... They say they're ...shutting it off!" he gasped out over the din, trying to catch his breath after running up and down the parking lot.

Just as he got it through the doorway, the spray stopped.

"What was that?" demanded Eric. "What the fuck was that?!"

"So, apparently, they were doing a periodic system test," said Allen huffily, still breathing hard between words. "If it all went to plan, it should have only discharged outside. From the service line behind the building. But for _some odd reason_ , it obviously malfunctioned. And it discharged in our room too. Presumably just our room."

"Do they have another room we can move to?" asked Albert.

"I asked," said Allen darkly. "The answer is no. We'll have to clean it up best as we can."

"How?" Joe wailed.

"They're sending us extra towels, fresh bedding, a wet-dry vacuum should be here shortly, and for our luggage, they're compensating us with free use of the laundry facility for whatever got hit. So tonight's the night to do laundry."

"And now's the time to get this all cleaned up before Sandy gets back and you three wind up in the hot seat with him," Eric added.

"Yeah, you got that right," called Joe, heading inside and beginning to strip the bedspreads off. "Let's pile these just outside the door here; Albert, start pulling the sheets off!"

Allen came in with the shop vac that had now arrived and began working at the water ponded over the carpet. Eric set off to work, recruiting Buck to help him push towels into the mattresses and soak up what had gotten through the covers, and with wiping up water on solid surfaces -the nightstand, the dresser, and where water had made it around the divider screen.

"I'm thinking that..." Joe pondered aloud as he picked the top layer of clothes out of his and Allen's suitcases, which had been open and left to the mercy of the sprinkler. "This oily stuff, we might want to rinse these out in the shower before taking them to the laundry."

"Not a bad idea," decided Allen. "Joe, if you could just bring to me what's needed, I can start on that. I'm going to leave the shop-vac here in the middle of the room since the stuff in the carpet is kind of thick -might need some scrubbing before I can get any more of it. Bring towels that need to be rinsed too."

"I'll get the vacuum; Albert, you take clothes to Allen, and Buck can bring towels," said Joe. 

He took the vacuum from Allen and began aggressively pushing it over the carpet grain, digging in and loosening more of the grime. Having the advantage of a thick, muscular upper body, Joe was better cut out for roughhousing with the vacuum.

Allen lay out a t-shirt and a pair of jeans flat against the bottom of the tub. They were lucky that this hotel had a shower head on a hose that he could pull down; it was one thing working in their favor for cleaning up. He pulled it down, and before he could turn on the water, heard a shout from outside.

"Albert, stop it! Go away; you're playing around way too much for right now!"

That was Joe.

"Albert, that's enough. Do something to help, before Sandy gets here." Eric now.

Allen sighed. Time to give him something to do. "Albert, come in here and help me out with this."

Albert came into the bathroom, laughing so hard he could barely stand upright. He was wearing his leather shorts on his head. No wonder Joe was so upset. Allen rolled his eyes at him.

"Come here, and when I finish rinsing these out, I want you to help me wring them out so they're not dropping wet and making a mess when we take them down to the laundry, okay? We'll take care of these first, and you were on the bed, so you're going to need to change so we can clean what you're wearing."

Buck appeared in the doorway with two towels that were completely saturated and useless to clean up anything else until they were cleaned.

Allen looked at the towels incredulously as he turned the shower head on the clothes with the water running.

"Jesus Christ! Did you put that on the floor by the vacuum?"

Buck didn't answer, but instead got just as wild a look as he pointed to the tub and snickered. The water running down the bottom turned a dark grey as the oily sprinkler water rinsed out of the clothes.

"Oh, gross!" he cried.

Allen turned around and looked.

"I'd say so too," he sighed. "What a complete mess!"

"Imagine what's gonna come out of those towels," said Albert, grinning mischievously.

"Don't even start," sighed Allen. "It'll be disgusting. I just hope whatever retardant they use in the system isn't going to back up the drain here." He pulled the clothes up, and on one end, he twisted, and had Albert twist the cloth in the opposite direction. More dark water squeezed out.

"It's going to take soap to get most of that out, but at least it won't choke the washing machine."

They repeated it with the towels, which as suspected, were much dirtier. Albert pushed past Allen and tried to flick some of the dirty water up out of the tub onto him and Buck.

"Don't even dare," Allen growled through clinched teeth. They had enough dirty water to mop up without kicking it out of the tub.

"I'm going to empty the vacuum; hurry with the towels, because we're gonna need more," ordered Eric, leaving through the door. 

It was when he was gone that stir-craziness from being stuck in a van for four days decided to fully manifest itself in greater chaos.

With the twisted up, wrung-out towel, Albert got an idea now that Eric wasn't watching. He sneaked out of the bathroom while Buck and Allen settled out another towel in the tub, and still with his infamous, troublemaker grin, swirled the rinsed towel around, and flicked it at Joe so that it slapped his back, hard.

"HEY!" shouted Joe. He reached out and snatched the shorts off of Albert's head and threw them at him.

Albert reached on the floor for another sprinkler-hit t-shirt and slung that at Joe.

"Give me the towel!" Both grabbed each end at the same time and tugged hard, just as Buck came out of the bathroom to see what was going on.

"Let go of it -ow!" Albert sat down hard as Joe let the towel go when he was pulling back at full force.

"Ha! You had it coming!" yelled Joe.

"Hey!" shouted Eric, coming inside, seeing Albert pitch his shorts back at Joe. "What's the number one rule we have about throwing things inside?!"

"Hey!" Allen repeated, tossing a wet washcloth out of the bathroom at Joe to attempt at getting him off Albert's case. "Break it up, you two!"

But Joe threw that at Albert, and Buck threw another towel out of the bathroom, and at that moment, a full-out war of throwing wet clothes broke out.

"Whoa, guys -this is not good!" warned Eric, ducking at the last nanosecond to avoid connection with a flying pillowcase. "Not the sheets too!"

"Joe!" shouted Allen. "Help me hoard up the rest of our wet clothes!"

"Oh, no you don't!" Albert threw himself down on Allen's pile of clothes to try and keep him from getting to it.

"Allen, are you serious? You too?" sighed Eric.

But Allen flicked a towel at Albert to chase him off, and soon, they'd gotten every item of clothing down to socks flying around the room. One of which hit Eric right in the face, knocking his sunglasses askew, and digging into his face by his eye.

"Stop -you all had better be joking!" He straightened his glasses, only to see Buck running hot on Joe's heels, standing on his tip-toes, trying to pull a towel around Joe's face so he couldn't see. "That's it; you all can clean this mess up on your own, because I'm not having any part of that!"

Eric ran out into the parking lot and back into his room, still leaving the deadbolt thrown in the open position because Buck had the keys, and sitting down on the end of the bed, listening to the shouts and laughter through the wall. If they were going to have a fight with wet clothes for Sandy to catch them in, then he would keep his nose clean and stay away from it.

His door swung open with a screech of the hinges.

Or he'd tried, that was.

"DUH-DUH-DUH!!!" sang Albert on the classic, descending pattern of doom. He stood in the doorway, a wound-up hand towel in each of his hands.

"Stop following me; I know you're gonna hit me with it," shouted Eric, standing up from the bed and running for the room extension, looking for the pull tab for the room divider.

Albert gave one of the towels a final twist, folded it in half, and sent it hurtling through the air to slap noisily against the back of Eric's neck.

"Ow, are you serious? That hurt!"

Albert's face suddenly fell into panic and his eyes bugged out.

"AHH! YOU'D BETTER RUN!" he screeched, running through toward Eric. Eric couldn't even tell if Albert was seriously intending it, or if he was fully out of his mind.

"Get out of my room!"

Albert pointed to where the towel had landed, on top of the suitcase that was not by Buck, nor Eric's bed.

"It's by Sandy's luggage! You'd better run!" he shouted, picking the towel up, re-rolling it, and running back toward the door.

"Get out of here," Eric followed and pushed Albert out, following him into the parking lot and standing in front of the door to block it. "Away from Sandy's luggage! Out of my room! And get back in your room and out of the parking lot!"

Albert dove back in his room, and knowing he wouldn't stay in there as long as he was outside, Eric reluctantly followed.

The second he got through the door, he got hit in the face by a flying jacket. He could see Buck reaching with the vacuum hose to get a sock off the ceiling light.

"What did I do to get into this mess?" he moaned to himself.

"I can tell you that," said Allen smugly. "You said I was being uptight for getting annoyed at you and Sandy, and now look what's happened."

"Yeah, thanks a lot, Allen; I can already see that. Can this get any crazier?!"

"ERIC! Don't EVER ask if it can get any worse!"

As soon as his words were out, a twisted up, wet hand towel went helicoptering through the air after Joe threw it sideways like a frisbee. It whooshed past Albert by a narrow margin and slapped into Allen's leg.

Not having expected it, Allen flinched, caught his foot in the carpet, and went down. He grabbed the floor lamp in the corner out of panic, and ended up taking it down to the floor with him. The shade fell off and rolled a good two feet from the lamp, then Albert kicked it like a soccer ball so it flew through the room until a chair in the path stopped it.

Buck pointed and laughed like that was the funniest thing he had seen in his life, dropping the vacuum hose. It crashed down between the beds with a hollow, plastic thump, managing to cut the motor back on so it moaned against the wet carpet.

"Stop," Eric warned, helping Allen up, then setting the lamp upright and helping Allen put the runaway shade back on once the keyboardist had chased it down. Unfortunately, that wasn't the only way it was going to get worse. Joe tried to throw at Albert again -this time with his leather shorts that Joe despised with great passion, and then Buck, who was running through after snatching up the towel that had caught Allen.

_"Ow!"_ Buck wailed, grabbing his arm. "That hurt!"

"How bad did that get you?" Eric demanded of Allen in reference to his hit after they'd determined the lamp would live. He then pointed to his neck, then the side of his face. "Look at this mark on my neck, and then this one by my eye -this is no joke."

Allen pulled up on his pants leg, revealing a long, red mark.

"It was covered, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been," he murmured.

Buck came back through pointing to his extended right arm, and the red splotch spread above and below his elbow on the soft, sensitive skin along the inside. It was visibly raised and paler on top than on the edges.

"Eric, look at this mark on my arm!"

Eric's eyes turned big as saucers so that the whites were visible through his sunglasses.

"HOLY COW, it's a _WELT!"_ he exclaimed. He pulled Buck in against his side protectively with one arm, before holding his other hand up and standing with his legs apart like a referee. 

"Okay. _No. More. Throwing._ Clothing! _I said, no more!"_

Laughing, Albert, took a closer look at a towel he'd been spinning up, held it up, pointed to an oily splotch where it had been pressed in to save the mattresses from the few places where the sheets had fully soaked through. He shoved it in Eric's face to taunt him.

"Yes, everything's discolored. That's disgusting," Eric sighed. He then pointed to Albert, who jumped back with a 'who, me?' look whilst still running in place.

"You, commit to no more throwing. Right now!"

Eric shifted his arm to point toward Joe as he came back through the doorway.

"You commit to no more-!"

"-Albert tried to give me a fat lip with a wash cloth," Joe snickered, pointing to his chin, which had a good red swelling on it.

"No, I have red marks everywhere too. For real -everyone, right now. Commit to no more throwing," Eric ordered. "Before someone really gets hurt. Look at this welt, look at that welt, and that one..." He pointed to the one on his neck, the one by his eye, the one on Buck's arm, and the ones on Joe's chest and chin. "I didn't throw any, just so you know."

"I only got hit in the leg," said Allen with a shrug, slipping past Eric. He'd anticipated it, and he wasn't going to fall victim to it. Now that the crisis had struck and it was obvious that Eric had to deal with the worst of what he'd wished on them, he just wanted to go to sleep once the room settled down.

Albert snatched up his shorts in one hand and a washcloth in the other, stood in the end of a bed, and with a battle cry, leapt off and charged toward Joe, flinging his hands so the cloth and shorts whipped around in the air. Buck followed after him with a towel and a t-shirt.

Joe ducked backwards with a sharp lean and guarded his face with his arm.

"Hey!" Eric pointed over. "Hey, I thought we committed. No more-!"

However, Buck and Albert weren't really throwing -just flipping the clothes in the air without letting go. It was less than a foot away from Joe's face, but not hitting him. Even if Joe's body language might have suggested otherwise. As Buck and Albert forced Joe to retreat backwards, Albert caught his foot in a stray shoe in his path and kicked it across the floor. It stopped on a stray hand-towel by the wet-vac hose' which was still poised to point in between the beds, soaking up the carpet wetness where the majority of the water ended up.

"Guys, look at this floor," Eric sighed. He sounded mournful. "Are you serious?"

"Go look at the _tub!"_ said Allen from the couch, peering over his book. He was now snickering in a way that set off his malocclusion for the whole world to see, and his toothy grin made him somehow look twice as amused as he really was.

"And why do you find this so funny when it's your room?" Eric demanded.

"Because," said Allen, slowly folding his book shut and looking up, "I told you so! Now you get to deal with it!"

The door swung open, and a wide-eyed Sandy Pearlman looked in on the room, raising his hands to the sides of his head in horror.

"What the HELL happened here?!"

"Good question!" hollered Joe, restraining Albert and pulling his shorts off his head again. "We hardly know ourselves!"

With a defeated sigh, Eric left Allen to attempt explaining the cursed madness around them into believable terms.


End file.
